An organization’s ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.

— Jack Welch, Former CEO GE

Strategy is implemented through projects, which are problem solving endeavors that require learning in order to create something new. We call the implementation of an organization's strategies through projects "Organizational Project Management."

As an executive, how can you implement your organization's strategies in a world that is increasingly complex, volatile, and uncertain? The answer, that one's organization must become a learning organization, is more than a platitude. Implementing organizational strategies through projects requires learning from project performance, converting information into knowledge to update strategic planning recursively. It is essential for leaders to operate this feedback loop capably and rapidly. To do this, they must increase their organization's maturity.

Just as organizational learning is the basis of Organizational Project Management, learning is the manner in which maturity in strategy-implementation is achieved, so that strategies can be implemented through projects successfully, consistently, and predictably.

Coordination is a cost, not a good. We wish to introduce no more of it than the intricacies of our goals require.

— Herbert Simon, Nobel Laureate

As the external environment becomes more complex, the learning that is the basis of increasing maturity is an activity that requires simplifying in order to enable the learning. The method for assessing maturity must be simple. The way organizational performance is focused on the most important things must be simple. The way capabilities are developed and sustained must be simple. All of these things must be streamlined because coordination is a cost, not a good.

Simplicity begets knowledge. Adopting simple rules in the respective projects of your organization causes order to emerge naturally from your portfolio, unleashing the potential of your organization to perform at the highest level, without requiring an all-knowing entity to control everything from the top. This is why the originator of PMI's OPM3 Program, the founder of OPM Experts LLC, created the "Strategy Implementation Maturity Protocol for Learning Enterprises" or "SIMPLE®," an incisive framework that has been used in AT&T, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, Delta Airlines, Fiserv, Flowserve, McKesson, Pentair, Sun Trust, TransLink, Verizon, and many others.

SIMPLE® is a procedure for assessing and developing the maturity of strategy-implementation in organizations that rely on projects. SIMPLE® makes strategy implementation simple by enabling the respective members of an organization to develop capabilities and implement practices that naturally complement each other, causing the whole to become greater than the sum of its parts without requiring constant coordination or centralized management by those at the top.

The English verb ‘to manage’ was originally derived from the Italian maneggiare, meaning to handle and train horses. ....the emphasis is on learning, abiding with, adapting to, respecting, and working with another complex entity....the horse and rider co-evolving...

— Dave Snowden, Knowledge Management Researcher

Simplifying requires mastery of the subject matter, the expertise to be able to distinguish what matters and what works and the essential levers that result in massive performance changes when pulled expertly. We have done that for you in the creation of SIMPLE®, which was designed to help organizations like your own develop the capabilities necessary to implement their strategies through projects successfully, consistently, and predictably.

SIMPLE® tackles an inherently complicated problem, that of distinguishing how to make strategy-execution more capable, and decomposes it into actionable pieces that make transformation of one's organization a realistic and sustainable agenda. We orchestrate your transformation by educating executive management on its role in breaking down old patterns that inhibit performance and on their role in leading change. At the same time, we educate practitioners at all levels in new modes of work that enable them to experience their competence quickly. In this way, managers and teams learn and co-evolve together.

SIMPLE enables users to infer their OPM3 maturity level and achieve the highest level of maturity in a fraction of the time typically required by OPM3.

— John Schlichter, Creator of OPM3 & Founder of OPM Experts

Because OPM Experts LLC led the original development of OPM3 on PMI's behalf and has been the longest-standing provider of OPM-related consulting, the firm has learned ways to improve significantly upon the OPM3 approach to developing the ability of organizations to implement strategies through projects. OPM Experts LLC has learned from repeated real-world interventions into companies of all kinds that one can vastly simplify the development of Organizational Project Management (OPM) capabilities and accelerate transformation in much more sustainable ways than those prescribed by OPM3.SIMPLE® enables users to infer their OPM3 maturity level and achieve the highest level of maturity in a fraction of the time typically required by OPM3.

ACHIEVE Strategic Alignment

SIMPLE® helps prioritization of business objectives, prioritization of projects against business objectives, and consensus building among stakeholders.

IMPROVE Benefit Realization

SIMPLE® helps the adoption of success criteria for projects and the fulfillment of benefits from the products of projects.

CREATE Customer Focus

SIMPLE® helps improve focus on the voice of the customer, the capturing of requirements, and helps create consistency between success criteria and requirements.

DELIVER Quality

SIMPLE® helps improve quality, preventing defects from being deployed into production or operations, and minimizing effort associated with inspection.

EXECUTE On-schedule

SIMPLE® helps make work estimating more capable, improves management of the critical path, and on-time delivery.

ACCELERATE Time-to-Market

SIMPLE® helps organizations deliver projects as fast as they need to be delivered. It helps the resolution of resource bottlenecks and the prevention of thrashing.